Publicizing Bollywood

Raise your hand if you ever watched an episode of I Love Lucy. Keep your hands up if you ever remember Ricky Ricardo telling his wife Lucy he was on his way to the studio to handle his publicity for whatever project he was working on. Such was the nature of Hollywood in its growing stages. In the early days, all public relations and publicity were handled almost exclusively through the studios or large conglomerate firms affiliated with production houses.

It was not until the 1970s and 1980s when independent publicists took over the world’s second largest entertainment industry. In today’s Hollywood, good luck scoring an interview, taking a photo with or saying anything more than “hello” to anyone affiliated with the industry without having to go through a publicist or management company. Almost gone are the days when the talent relied upon production companies to handle their public relations issues.

Indeed, publicists and public relations professionals are a dime a dozen in today’s Hollywood. Ah, the good ole days, when entertainment publicists and Starbucks Coffee were almost non-existent! Too bad there is no longer a major entertainment industry where publicists are harder to find than drive-in theaters.

Oh, wait — there actually is a place where publicists are hard to find: Bollywood! Claiming to be the world’s largest movie industry, modern-day Bollywood mimics Hollywood in the 1940s, both on and off the screen.

While today’s Bollywood films have an aversion to racy sex scenes just as some of Hollywood’s greatest classics before 1965, it is interesting to see Bollywood handle its publicity in a similar manner.

Off the screen, it is not too uncommon to find Indian studios and production companies handling the public relations for its own movies and associated talent. The days of a market flooded with publicists has yet to arrive in Bollywood, or any of the other regional film industries such as Tollywood or Kollywood.

Considering the explosion of Bollywood on the international stage, the market is ripe for publicists to fill the void. One person who is trying to fill that void is Mumbai-based Dale Bhagwagar, who has handled the media for several Bollywood A-listers, including Hrithik Roshan, Shilpa Shetty, Priyanka Chopra and Esha Deol, among others. In all, he represents more than forty Indian celebrities and more than thirty filmmakers.

As Bhagwagar breaks ground in Bollywood, the young public relations professional is setting the standard for publicity in India. “I think PR is all about influencing minds, forming perceptions, and defining the way people see things,” Bhagwagar said about the role of public relations in entertainment. “I often say that we are living in a world where perception is reality. With the kind of reach a good publicist has, he or she can sway opinions in various directions.”

Yet, limiting public relations to just publicity is rather limiting for Bhagwagar. Instead, he sees public relations as something bigger, as if it is an art form. “Publicity is just one part of PR activity,” Bhagwagar candidly said. “Plain publicity is more about recognition. It’s about imaging, branding and executing makeovers. PR is an intriguing mind-game.”

It is a mind game that Bollywood is just getting used to. While the industry produces about 800 movies per year and has a media market large enough to keep up with the intricacies of each film, the conduit public relations executives provide has not necessarily kept pace with Bollywood’s exponential growth. However, as the number of publications seeking coverage increases and technology expands the realm of Bollywood beyond India’s borders, publicists are quickly becoming a necessity. For Bhagwagar, the Indian film industry needs public relations executives to manage information shared with the public. “Today, public relations executives decide where to break exclusive stories, what angles and news pegs to highlight, and who they want to patronize for exclusive news breaks,” Bhagwagar said about how he sees his role in Bollywood, which is not too different from what is expected of publicists in Hollywood.

Yet, the one aspect of his job that is different from Hollywood publicists is — since Bollywood is just as popular in cities such as London, New York and Los Angeles — he has to deal with Non-Resident Indians on a regular basis. “On so many occasions, I have broken huge stories on foreign websites catering to NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) and created extensive impact by spreading the web links, and also through news wire services on the net. Then, I have got the same story picked up by our national television channels, who have given it more importance just because of its international web presence.”

Nonetheless, while Bhagwagar is a trailblazer when it comes to independent public relations executives acting as the ultimate buffer between entertainers and their fans, he believes global firms will not be able to infiltrate the Bollywood market, hence fostering long-term growth for local representation. Accordingly, he believes an entire niche market of Bollywood public relations executives will explode over the next few years, primarily because global PR firms will not understand the industry like locals can. “A ‘client servicing’ representative from a corporate agency cannot understand the moods, ambitions, insecurities and temperaments of our Bollywood stars,” Bhagwagar said about local, independent PR firms sprucing up in Mumbai over the next few years. “The independents will always survive and grow, as they also bring in the element of trust, faith and secrecy in their dealings and day-to-day workings.”

As Bollywood grows worldwide, Bhagwagar expects the public relations aspect of the industry to remain home in India. Yet, as Bollywood grows into a global phenomenon just as Hollywood did several decades ago, Bhagwagar will continue to be at the forefront of developing the image of the world’s largest film industry.